The pamphlet enclosed by
Sir Rowland Hill in the above letter is entitled 'The Rotary
Printing Machine.' It is very clever and ingenious, like
everything he did. But it was still left for some one else to
work out the invention into a practical working printing-press.
The subject is fully referred to in the 'Life of Sir Rowland
Hill' (i. 224,525). In his final word on the subject, Sir
Rowland "gladly admits the enormous difficulty of bringing a
complex machine into practical use," a difficulty, he says, which
"has been most successfully overcome by the patentees of the
Walter Press."
CHAPTER VIII.
WILLIAM CLOWES: INTRODUCER OF BOOK-PRINTING BY STEAM.
"The Images of men's wits and knowledges remain in Books,
exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual
renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called Images, because
they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others,
provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding
ages; so that, if the invention of the Ship was thought so noble,
which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and
consociateth the most remote Regions in participation of their
Fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as
Ships, pass through the vast Seas of time, and make ages so
distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and
inventions, the one of the other?"--Bacon, On the Proficience and
Advancement of Learning.
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